Book Reviews by Today, I Read…

Happy Tuesday! It’s time again for another edition of Teaser Tuesdays…

Here are the rules:

• Grab your current read
• Let the book fall open to a random page
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• You also need to share the title of the book where you get your teaser from…that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given
• Please avoid spoilers

This week’s teaser:

"I’d had enough. We’d eaten crabs (I hate seafood), gone up in the Trade Center (I hate heights), and visited the National Aquarium (did I mention I hate seafood?)–all because Zachary kept playing the birthday card." pg. pg. 190 Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready

I’m a few chapters into the story and while I admit it took those few chapters for me to warm up to it, I must say I’m intrigued.

The world that’s being painted, where anyone born after a certain date can see spirits and in turn help them, has my eyebrow perked up and Zachary? Have I mentioned that I love accents? He happens to have a Scottish one.

Title: The Gardener
Author: S. A. Bodeen
ISBN: 978-0312370169
Story Length: 240 pages
Genre: Middle Grade Science Fiction

Back Cover of The Gardener

Mason has never known his father, but longs to. All he has of him is a DVD of a man whose face is never seen, reading a children’s book. One day, on a whim, he plays the DVD for a group of comatose teens at the nursing home where his mother works. One of them, a beautiful girl, responds. Mason learns she is part of a horrible experiment intended to render teenagers into autotrophs—genetically engineered, self-sustaining life-forms who don’t need food or water to survive. And before he knows it, Mason is on the run with the girl, and wanted, dead or alive, by the mysterious mastermind of this gruesome plan, who is simply called the Gardener.

Will Mason be forced to destroy the thing he’s longed for most?

Three Quick Points About The Gardener

• Point 1: Ample material with which to start a discussion. The book deals quite a bit with the changing global environment and its ramifications for the human race.
• Point 2: Spotty character development. Mason, as a character, started out well enough, but when Laila was introduced the character development faltered and stalled.
• Point 3: Plot by numbers. The unfolding plot was too convenient, even for a middle grade read, and a side effect was a problem with consistency. Continue reading »

Title: Rumor Has It
Author: Jill Mansell
ISBN: 978-1402237508
Story Length: 416 pages
Genre: Chick Lit

Back Cover of Rumor Has It

This man doesn’t seem to match his reputation…

Newly single Tilly Cole impulsively moves to a small town, only to find she’s arrived in a hotbed of gossip, intrigue, and rampant rivalry for the most desirable man–irresistible Jack Lucas, whose reputation is beyond bad. Tilly has no intention of becoming another notch on his bedpost. But the thoughtful, caring guy she comes to value as a friend doesn’t seem to fit the town’s playboy image. Tilly doesn’t know what to believe–and Jack’s not telling.

Three Quick Points About Rumor Has It

• Point 1: Somewhat predictable. It’s the nature of the beast with chick lit, but in the case of Tilly & Jack, it’s a bit more obvious than necessary.
• Point 2: Slow to start. The “good stuff” doesn’t begin to reveal itself until about the first five or six chapters in, but when it does it becomes a fun (and funny) romp.
• Point 3: Culture shock. I’ve read a bit of Brit chick lit, but this one seemed especially heavy on the Briticisms. It took quite some time to acclimate. Continue reading »

It’s Thursday and you know what that means…another edition of Booking Through Thursday is here.

This week’s question is: What books do you have next to your bed right now? How about other places in the house? What are you reading?

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words…

(Apologies for the super-craptasical camera phone picture quality.)

Rundown of the books are: Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose; The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbitt; Goody Hall by Natalie Babbitt; The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan; Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen; White Cat by Holly Black; Ash by Malinda Lo; Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater; The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons; A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliot; The Metamorphoses by Ovid (which is concealed); Bite Me by Christopher Moore; The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot; The Autobiography of an Execution by David R. Dow; and The Hollow by Jessica Verday.

And probably not surprisingly, I also have a stack of books on the floor near my bed, but I’ll spare you. As for having books in other places in the house, um…of course. An easier question would be, where don’t I have books?

Right now my reading is rotating between three books. Having finished The Unwritten Rule on Sunday and slated to complete Dork Diaries (Book 2) today, I will be working Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready into the mix with Stolen by Lucy Christopher and Rumor Has It by Jill Mansell. (I’m a mood-based reader, hence the seemingly random book pool.)

Happy Tuesday! It’s time again for another edition of Teaser Tuesdays…

Here are the rules:

• Grab your current read
• Let the book fall open to a random page
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• You also need to share the title of the book where you get your teaser from…that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given
• Please avoid spoilers

This week’s teaser:

"And then, when his mother got cancer for the second time, though Charlie knew about the chemo and the radiation and the lymph nodes, it was months before anyone acknowledged how serious it was. She was dying by the time Charlie’s sister called and urged him home." pg. 53 Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline

This is one of those books that’s been sitting on my TBR stack for ages that I’ve been meaning to read for just as long and always shove aside for one reason or another, but now I’m focused on finishing it.

I’m about halfway through now and I’m wondering why I waited so long. It’s the story of four people struggling through their individual and coupled lives in the wake of a tragedy.

I love character studies (I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before)–just stick a bunch of interesting people in a pressure cooker together and see what happens–and this book is shaping up to be an interesting one. Infidelity and a car accident in which a young boy dies. That’s what I call a pressure cooker if ever there was one.